New Recordings
We just added two new releases to the GEMS online CD Store! East of the River's Levantera, which explores Medieval music of Western Europe and travels eastward through the Balkans to Armenia and the Middle East. Nina Stern and Daphna Mor, recorders, are joined by Tamer Pinarbasi, kanun; Jesse Kotanski, violin and oud; and Shane Shanahan, percussion. The BREVE ensemble, featuring Deborah Booth on recorder and baroque flute, and Stephen Rapp on harpsichord and organ, recently released their album Conversations, with baroque sonatas from Italy, France, and Germany.

Midtown Concerts moves to St. Bart's for May and June
If you are a regular attendee of the Midtown Concerts series on Thursdays at 1:15pm, please note that next week's concert on April 25 will be the last at Saint Peter's Church. The remaining concerts, from May 2 onward, will take place at the Chapel of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue at East 51st Street. We are not moving far, so we hope that you will be able to join us for the remaining eight concerts of the season.

Of Special Interest

Pomerium performs the final concerts of their 40th-anniversary season at The Cloisters this Sunday at 1pm and 3pm, concluding a year of celebration. The climactic ending of the program on 4/21 will be Tallis's 40-voice motet, Spem in alium, a work especially appropriate to Pomerium's anniversary. In addition to the 13 current singers in Pomerium, who will sing most of the program, the remaining 27 necessary to perform Spem in alium at the end will almost all be Pomerium alums (just three exceptions). Pomerium's 40th-anniversary year began with a concert last May in the Music Before 1800 series. That program presented a retrospective of the wide-ranging repertoire performed by the ensemble over the course of 40 concert seasons, with music ranging from Machaut to Alfonso Ferrabosco. In this final concert, all the music on the program is drawn from the rich and splendid repertoire composed for Mary Tudor, English Queen of England, during the brief span of years from 1553 to 1558. It features only the English composers Christopher Tye, Robert White, John Sheppard, Robert Parsons, and, most prominently, Thomas Tallis.

The final concert in the inaugural GEMAS Series (Early Music of the Americas) is on April 30 at 6 pm with free admission. The Clarion Society teams up with Meridionalis for a concert of music written in the Jesuit missions of eastern Bolivia. Missionary activity in the region started in the late seventeenth century and continued in earnest until the expulsion of the order from Spanish territory in 1767. This concert presents instrumental and choral works from one of America's great baroque musical centers, including pieces by Domenico Zipoli and anonymous composers.

GEMAS, Early Music of the Americas, presentsThe Bishop's Band
Music of late 18th-century Peru from the Codex Trujillo del Perú
Tom Zajac, co-director and winds
Nell Snaidas, co-director and soprano
along with an all-star cast of singers, instrumentalists and dancers

Choir of St. Luke in the FieldsEaster at the Sistine Chapel
Featuring the first North American performance of Gregorio Allegri's Missa Christus resurgens, along withmotets for the Easter season by Allegri, Palestrina, Josquin and Anerio, all of which would have been sung by the Papal Choir of the Sistine Chapel.

Thursday, April 25 at 8 pm Tickets: $25-$35
Lecture with Dr. Emily Wilbourne (CUNY) at 7 pm
The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street (one block south of Christopher Street), Manhattan

GEMAS, Early Music of the Americas, presentsClarion & MeridionalisMusic of the Bolivian Missions
An all-star cast of 14 singers and instrumentalists led by Steven Fox and Sebastian Zubieta in music from the Chiquitos and Moxos Archives.

Five Boroughs Music Festival presentsParthenia & Blue HeronSongs for a Parisian Spring
A new program of 16th-century French sacred and secular works, featuring music by Claude Le Jeune, André Pevernage, Eustache Du Caurroy, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and others.

Sunday, May 5 at 4 pm Tickets start at $25
The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street (just south of Christopher Street), Manhattan

All concerts in May and June at:
The Chapel at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church
325 Park Avenue at East 51st Street, Manhattan

April 25 - Paul Dwyer, celloThe Rise of the Solo Cellist
Late 17th century Bologna gave rise to the violoncello as a solo instrument. One of the cellist-composers responsible for this development is Giovanni Baista Degli Antonii, whose Ricercar XII – featured alongside J.S. Bach's Suite in C minor – combines the new Italian virtuosity with a distinctly French style

May 2 - Rebecca Pechefsky, harpsichordJohann Von Ludwig Krebbs at 300
Rebecca Pechefsky will play keyboard music of Johann Ludwig Krebs to celebrate the release of her CD of Krebs, and her upcoming concert in Germany in October of 2013 on the 300th anniversary of Krebs’s birth.